Briefe im 19. Jahrhundert als wissenschaftshistorische Quelle. Dargestellt am Beispiel des Briefwechsels des Apothekers A. P. J. Du Menil (1777–1852)

The aim of this article is to demonstrate the importance of scientific communication of pharmacists in the 19th century. 89 letters were analysed both written received by August Peter Julius Du Menil (1777–1852). In the paper also a summary is given about the importance of extensive activity of the pharmacist Du Menil. He was be in correspondence with 39 scientists, for instance 13 physicans and 12 pharmacists. The letters are an interesting document about scientific community in the 19th century.     

Vertrauensvorschuß und wissenschaftliches Fehlhandeln — Eine reliabilistische Modellierung der Fälle Abderhalden,Goldschmidt, Moewus und Waldschmidt‐Leitz

Reliabilist philosophy of science considers scientific misconduct a transgression against the principles of good cognitive practice. Good practice in research is characterised by the reliability, efficiency and fertility of the cognitive processes involved. The reliabilist approach is closely connected to the idea of mutual cognitive dependency of the research community. Trust in the testimony of others is not an inevitable but a favouring factor of scientific progress — and misconduct damages the testimonial chain, respectively the principle of trustworthiness. Within the reliabilist framework, the main focus on questionable research is not on whether or not there are fraudulent intentions (that means particular mental events of the past), but on recognisable consequences for the research community. Criticising the constructivist modeling of questionable research, we reconstruct certain contributions by Emil Abderhalden, Richard Goldschmidt, Franz Moewus, and Ernst Waldschmitz‐Leitz as serious misconducts respectively frauds. We also show that specific social factors — often regarded as “apologising” conditions — decisively interfere with the principle of trustworthiness in the scientific community.     

意义的赋予:时势转移与"五四"话语的演变

时至今日,“五四”一词早已内化为一种思想符号,其“内化”实由伴随现代中国时势转移而不断演变的“五四”话语所造成。这种历史现象意味着两层含义：其一,“五四”话语随时势转移而变换其意义,而意义的深度与广度则取决于“五四”话语对时势的阐释状态;其二,对“五四”历史价值的释义过程,实际上是“五四”不断被赋予意义、不断被追认价值、不断被叠加内涵的过程。那么,这一历史现象是如何生成的呢？也就是说,“五四”内涵的意义扩张,是通过何种方式实现的呢？考究这个问题,实际上就是考索“五四”话语在各个不同时期的演变过程。     

SELF-TAUGHT WRITERS,FAMILY CORRESPONDENCE,AND SOCIAL MOBILITY IN THE 19TH-CENTURY FINNISH ARCHIPELAGO

How can the private, everyday letters written by two literate members of a rural community be used as historical sources? How can they enhance understanding of the process of upward social mobility which took place in Finland in the latter part of the 19th century and produced a new, Finnish-speaking and nationally oriented university-educated gentry? A collection of nearly 150 letters written from 1858 to 1887 by country skipper Simon Jansson and his wife Wilhelmina document in great detail their daily life and thoughts as well as the news and the social life of their seafaring community. They attest to how non-elite families were able to grasp the opportunities that were opening up for them and to give their sons a university education. For a country skipper, the favourable economic conditions for peasant seafaring after the Crimean War were decisive. The process of social mobility and the rise of the new educated elite have been studied with the social status and occupation of the students’ fathers as a starting point. The Jansson letters show that the social and cultural capital brought into the family by the mother could be crucial.     

Electrical instruments in 19th century France,between makers and users

Abstract

Having quickly described new historiographical approaches to scientific instruments, this paper explores some characteristics of the evolution of the relationship between scientific instrument makers and French physicists in the 19th century. Artisans without a scientific culture at the dawn of the century, a certain number of instrument makers were integrated into the scientific community by its end, sharing their practices and their values. These builders served as mediators between different physicists, between physicists and members of other disciplines like physiology and, finally, between savants and the world of technology (telegraphy and then industrial electricity). Symmetrically, a significant number of French physicists left mathematical physics for a physics based on instruments and their development. The emergence, extension, and eventual disappearance of the different contexts of use of an instrument (amateurs, public performances, teaching, research, medicine, telegraphy, industry, etc) illustrate both the boundary crossings between these different domains and the major role that use played in successive reconfigurations of instruments.     

Der Scharlatan auf dem Rechtsweg — und was vielleicht zu seiner Umlenkung getan werden könnte

A number of recent allegations of scientific misconduct in Germany have led to judicial proceedings. Two examples are analyzed in depth, showing evidence for mutual incompatibilities between the legal system and the scientific system. In particular, it seems doubtful whether basic rules of good scientific practice are adequately and consistently taken into account by the courts when assessing the burden of proof. Strengths and weaknesses of some alternatives to judicial proceedings in such cases are discussed.     

“共和”与“民主”的趋同——美国革命时期对“共和政体”的重新界定

在美国革命时期,"共和"这一古老政治词汇的含义发生了重大变化。美国建国者参照各种政治理论和历史经验,结合他们所处社会的特点,不仅成功建立了一种新型政体,而且为它做了全面的辩护和诠释,从而完成了对"共和政体"的重新界定。这种新型的共和政体,不再是"人民"与贵族分享权力的混合政体,而是完全建立在"人民主权"基础上的代表制政体,它的社会基础、价值取向和适应范围都发生了深刻变化,与古典共和理念之间形成了明显的差异。与此同时,"民主"的概念也得以扩充,"人民"通过代表制行使政治权力的政府,与"人民"亲自掌握权力的政府一样,都可以叫做"民主"。这两个交错并行的观念转化过程,不仅塑造了现代意义上的"共和"与"民主"的概念,而且使得两个原本含义不同的政体名称,最终变成了同义词。     

‘Realpoetik’: Revolution by Other Means in European Romantic Restoration Thought

Summary

This essay speculates about the degree to which a counter-image of Europe imagined by Romantic period writers showed them to be transforming an inherited idea of the republic of letters for political purposes. While Anglophone romanticists recognise that the French Revolution is an indisputable agent in shaping the contemporary English literary imagination, they then usually ignore the role played by the Restoration which followed. Romantic criticism can perhaps learn an appropriate sensitivity here from the work of critics of English Restoration writing of the seventeenth century. That epochal uncertainty, when the regicides beheaded the King and then wondered what to do politically, was succeeded in the Restoration by a kind of Dissenting determination to continue under or memorialise that uncertainty, not as a dilemma but as the experience of political opportunity. A similar pattern of pursuing revolution by other means is visible in the political revisionism and literary experimentation of post-Revolutionary Romantic radicals. In my picture, then, the Romantic transformation of the republic of letters recovers an older literary republicanism. In what is here dubbed Realpoetik the battle for what is to be political reality is fought on a rhetorical field whose free speech is exemplary of what politics should be like.     

Das Reisen ist des Chemikers Lust - auf den Spuren Robert Bunsens. Zu Robert Wilhelm Bunsens 100. Todestag

The article deals with an aspect of the famous German chemist Robert Bunsen which has not been of much notice so far: his journeys. During his stay in Heidelberg (from 1852 on) Bunsen journeyed up to four months a year. Up to the age of seventy-eight, he travelled twice almost every year either in spring or autumn when there were no lectures at the university. He made his journeys for reasons of pleasure and in need of rest from teaching and research. In the 19th century such frequency of travelling was quite unusual even for a bachelor like Bunsen. Beeing an enthusiastic wayfarer Bunsen also travelled far away often, so for example to Italy twelve times (even to Sicily), four times to Scotland and England, and twice to Mallorca. - Bunsen's first nine week journey to Italy in 1843 disappointed him as to its scientific outcome. This journey was a turning-point since he had travelled before for scientific purposes only, beginning with the postdoctoral trip which Bunsen took 1831/32 (sponsored by his sovereign, the king of Hannover) to Berlin, Paris and Vienna for education and information matters. The article sets this journey as well as subsequent travels focusing on science (information, professional communication, experimental team-work) in the framework of continuing academic training. In the end of the 18th and in the 19th century such journeys for further academic education were mainly done at public expense by chemists and geologists as well as by mining and steel scientists to prepare and qualify themselves as either university professors or administrators for mining metallurgical industry. All these various forms of travelling (postdoctoral educational travels at public expense, scientific journeys, meetings for experimental team-work, expeditions, and recreational trips) served the communication within the scientific community. No one who wanted to belong to this community was able to escape such form of communication.     

NEARCHOS. Networked Archaeological Open Science: Advances in Archaeology Through Field Analytics and Scientific Community Sharing

The full release and circulation of excavation results often takes decades, thus slowing down progress in archaeology to a degree not in keeping with other scientific fields. The nonconformity of released data for digital processing also requires vast and costly data input and adaptation. Archaeology should face the cognitive challenges posed by digital environments, changing in scope and rhythm. We advocate the adoption of a synergy between recording techniques, field analytics, and a collaborative approach to create a new epistemological perspective, one in which research questions are constantly redefined through real-time, collaborative analysis of data as they are collected and/or searched for in an excavation. Since new questions are defined in science discourse after previous results have been disseminated and discussed within the scientific community, sharing evidence in remote with colleagues, both in the process of field collection and subsequent study, will be a key innovative feature, allowing a complex and real-time distant interaction with the scholarly community and leading to more rapid improvements in research agendas and queries.     

A racial triangle: physical anthropology and race theories between Germans,Jews and Poles

The last decades of the nineteenth century saw a growing prominence of German racial sciences. This article documents how East Central European scholars responded to their potential marginalization within the scientific community due to German racial theories in the field of physical anthropology and the popularization of science. Three personalities represent a sample of this variety: Ludwik Gumplowicz, a Polish-Jewish sociologist; Mateusz Mieses, a Galician Jewish amateur anthropologist; and Jan Czekanowski, professor of anthropology and spiritus rector of the Lwów school of anthropology. All three cases illustrate the contradictions inscribed into the concept of transnationalism. To varying extents, they belonged to the German-speaking scientific community, through which they gained access to international science. Their reactions to anti-Jewish and anti-Slavic positions among the dominant racial theories of their time shines light on the tensions which were present within the academic community, as well as on the tensions that appeared between their own (semi-)professional status, self-perception and their group identities. The international communication and contacts came into conflict with the exclusionary philosophy of racial theories, thus perpetually challenging their transnational position. The responses of these actors sought to redefine spatial and methodological frameworks amid the dominant discourses. Each making attempts in their own way, they aimed at reversing what they perceived as aberrations of racial theories while persistently remaining within this discourse.     

Contesting Putin's nation‐building: the ‘Muslim other’ and the challenge of the Russian ethno‐cultural alternative

This article explains the crystallisation of a new Russian national discourse, shaped by a challenge posed to Putin's statist non‐ethnic national model by a popularly formed ethno‐cultural alternative, constructed through negation of the ‘Muslim other’. The article describes this new and previously overlooked phenomenon of Russian nationalism and explicates the social mechanism behind its formation. The article concludes that when rampant corruption exists, generating a breakdown of legal order, the ‘other’ is defined through behaviour that deviates from accepted local norms, while the contrasting normative ‘general public’ is defined as ‘Russian’. Such group definitions mean that the current process of Russian grass‐roots exclusive national consolidation is based predominantly on culturally based behavioural codes, rather than on mere ethnic or religious affiliation, as is widely believed. Additionally, a conceptual landmark discourse shift from the question of Russia's mere plausibility as a nation‐state to a focus on its ongoing definition is demonstrated.     

Deutsch-italienische Wissenschaftsbeziehungen im 18. und 19. Jahrhundert — Dimensionen und Perspektiven

The scientific interrelationships between Italy and Germany in the 18th and 19th centuries — a hitherto neglected area of research — are discussed in an overview according to the following ten dimensions: language knowledge and translations; reviews and bibliographies; library content; personal contents and correspondance; travel reports and travel guides; diaries and autobiographies; university studies and research sojourns; membership in academies and scientific societies; practical and theoretical resonance; comparisons to other countries. This approach, which has to be concretized in future studies, promises at the same time general insights into the logic of science and its progress.     

The lost cause: failed French ultimata and the restoration of papal rule in Rome in 1849

In one of history’s ironies, the republic that arose in Rome out of Europe’s revolutionary wave in 1848 was crushed by the new republic that had formed in France at the same time. In an additional irony, the destruction of the Roman Republic and the restoration of the papal theocracy were overseen by the internationally renowned champion of constitutional rights and freedom, Alexis de Tocqueville, then France’s foreign minister. This article sheds new light on this dramatic series of events through an examination of the French diplomatic correspondence, which reveals growing dismay at the direction in which events were unfolding. The correspondence also gives a sense of how close the French came to abandoning the pope, a decision that could have changed the course of Italian and French, as well as Church history.     

Working-Class Women and Republicanism in the French Revolution of 1848

Abstract

Following the February Revolution in 1848, working-class women as well as men attempted to hold the government to its promise of the right to work, through street demonstrations, individual and collective demands for work, and participation in the national workshops that had been established in an attempt to address the problem of unemployment in the capital. In the process, these activists articulated what scholars have labelled as a democratic socialist vision of republicanism. In June of 1848, women participated in the insurrection that sought to defend the vision of a social republic. While the republicanism of working-class men and bourgeois women such as George Sand has been examined, studies of working-class women in the first half of the nineteenth century have to this point focused on the romantic socialist influences that shaped their activities, in particular the Saint-Simonian movement. Drawing primarily on individual letters, police interrogations and newspaper reports, a vision of republicanism emerges that includes the ability for women to sustain their families through waged as well as household labour. This concept of republican virtue based itself not in suffrage but in women's capacity to act as both producers and consumers under just and equitable conditions.     

Die Fotografie – ein neues Bildmedium im Wissenschaftspanorama des 19. Jahrhunderts. Einführung in das Symposium

Photography – a novel medium of scientific representation in the XIXth century array of arts and sciences. To delve into various nineteenth century academic disciplines under the heading ‘photography in the arts and sciences’ as did last year's annual conference of the History of Science Society – the interest in such a topic only partly stems from the ‘iconic turn’ that has generally enlarged the scope of the social sciences in recent years. A more poignant feature in any such present day study will probably be a basic scepticism facing the fact that in public use photographs have been manipulated in many respects. Yet, while shying away from any simple success story, a historically minded approach to changing ‘visual paradigms’ (Historische Bildwissenschaft) has begun to emerge. In this context, it has proved of considerable heuristic value to reconsider the role of early photography in an array of science, arts and technology: Since the reliance on the traditional ways of sketching reality persisted, in many an instance where photography was introduced, the thoughts the pioneer photographers had about their new, seemingly automated business, call for close attention. Thus scholarship sets up a parallel ‘discussion room’; the lively debate on the benefit of academic drawings as opposed to photographic portraits is a case in point. Some fairly specialised reports on photographically based analyses, such as electron microscopy, point to a borderline where the very idea of representation as a correspondence of reality and imagination gets blurred. Even though any ‘visual culture’ will have to shoulder the ‘burden of representation’, it is equally likely that it will offer a deeper sensibility for the intricacies entailed in the variegated ways of illustrating or mapping chosen subjects of scientific interest. Scholarship may thus somewhat control the disillusionment that by now has become the epitome of writing on photographic history. Provided with a renewed methodological awareness for the perception process and its photographic transition, historians may strike a better balance between the ever present tendencies of a realistic and an aesthetic way of picturing the world we live in.     

Die Verlegung der Berliner Sternwarte nach Babelsberg — ein konservativer Neubeginn

In 1913 the Berlin Observatory was moved from the center of the city to Babelsberg on the outskirts of Berlin, now part of Potsdam. The new observatory was considerably larger in size and with respect to its staff, and it had got a completely new equipment. At that time it was the most modern astronomical observatory in Germany and possibly even in Europe. However, the scientific results achieved afterward were not comparable to that of other institutions, especially in the USA. A main reason was the conservative concept for the observatory, drawn up by Wilhelm Foerster and his colleagues, and restricting the work to classical fields of astronomy. Foerster's successor Hermann Struve tried to follow rather strictly this concept as well as the traditions of his family of astronomers. This led to conflicts with his collaborators Eugen Goldstein, Erwin Finlay Freundlich and Paul Guthnick, who were interested rather in astrophysics than in the classical problems.     

Die Embryologie im Spannungsfeld zwischen Tradition und Empirie

Already in classical antiquity people dealt with the principle of formation, developing different theories. Researchers in the renaissance, working in the conflict zone between tradition and experience, tried to prove one or the other of these theories by the means of new observations, especially of chicken development. Aldrovandi was the first to see the real principle of formation of the hen's egg, i. e. the blastodisc, but he didn't recognize the importance of his discovery due to his close adherence to Aristotle in the theoretical field. Fabricius even thought that traditional knowledge was of more importance than his own excellent observations. Parisano was the first to succeed in making a correct interpretation of the function of the blastodisc, but only by holding to a ‘false’ classical theory. Harvey combined his attempt to restore the developmental theory of Aristotle with a religious interpretation postulating God's intervention in all development. Subsequent to atomism, Highmore evolved a two seed theory of development, which in his view made a permanent engagement of God superfluous. Also the first observations using the microscope did not contribute to any improvement in developmental theory. Malpighi used them to confirm the theory of epigenesis, whereas Croone attributed to a piece of blastoderm the proportion of a whole embryo to demonstrate his ovistic theory of preformation. The founder of animalculism Leeuwenhoek, an amateur researcher, was at first not influenced by the trends of the scientific community. He postulated that the spermatozoa, which he discovered, contained perfect miniature animals. His investigations are a good example of where prejudices can lead, even when the observations are excellent. In the 17th century the tension between experience and tradition shifted in favour of experience, but a final solution had not by any means been reached.     

Romantischer Dilettantismus — Johann Wilhelm Ritter und die Begründung der Elektrochemie

In this paper the psychological and historical problems of the german philosophy of nature at the time about 1800 are described. During this time the romantic philosopher and scientist of nature Ritter developed a new scientific branch of knowledge: the electrochemistry. Ritter represents exemplarily the type of a romantic dilettante. In this period, the problem of dilettantism got a new validity, especially by Goethe and Schiller: it was recognized as a positive power of human. In the romantic dilettantism of Ritter three aspects are shown: 1st, romantic dilettantes are intellectual flaneurs; 2nd, romantic dilettantes confront facts and general provisions, which up to this moment are supposed to be paradox, and obtain by this method a synthesis; 3rd, romantic dilettantes favour the intuitive power.